The rise of modern Mexican astronomy was due to some remarkable Mexicans and a Turkish-Armenian who studied at the Harvard College Observatory in the late 1930s and early 1940s and the passion of HCO Director Harlow Shapley for astronomy as an international science.
The country’s President Manuel Avila Camacho was key to the change. Over his six-year term from 1940 to 1946, Camacho supported building a modern observatory. It opened in 1942; many significant contributions were made there. It is the foundation of EL INAOE, Mexico’s program in astronomy and astrophysics. 1/
The town of Tonantzintla today is located right where it was in 1940 when Camacho and the astronomers chose it for the new National Astrophysical Observatory, known by the Spanish acronym OANTON.
Mountains 17,000 high viewed from the hill of the OANTON observatory. Beyond the town of Tonantzintla and Spanish church are two famous volcanoes. Image: Bill Keel, boa.edu (2006)
At the opening ceremony Shapley told the crowd why this site was better than most northern observatories for astronomical research. Its advantages are the climate and ”especially … its latitude (19 degrees south of the Equator). [Here] the sun, moon and planets and most of the star-filled sky are nicely available for observation.
“All of the Milky Way can be seen, not merely the 60 percent or so that can be satisfactorily explored from most northern observatories. The center of the Milky Way system in Sagittarius is readily accessible, as are both galactic polar caps.” 2/
Grand Inauguration
The opening ceremonies drew leaders from the town, the state and city, teachers, Mexican scientists, deputies, senators. Astronomers came from the US and Canada for the Inter-American Congress of Astrophysics that followed the dedication. European astronomers could not attend because the war in Europe prevented civilian ship travel. 3/
Opening of OANTON Observartorio Astrofisico de Tonantzintla on February 17, 1942. Image: INAOE/OANTON
Inter-American Astrophysical Conference, Mexico, 1942. Image: Harvard Archives
Shapley’s speech noted President John Quincy Adams had founded an observatory in Cleveland Ohio and “inaugurated…astronomical research” at Harvard. “President Adams believed that the cultural advance of a nation could be measured by the development of its astronomical observatory.”
Manuel Avila Camacho (1897-1955) was President of Mexico 1940-1946. Image: mexicodesconocido.com.mx
President Camacho told the crowd that the Mexican government’s purpose was to advance the progress of science and culture “and thus counteract the paralyzation of scientific and cultural activities in the countries devastated by war.” 4/
Mexico’s progress was symbolized with stamps for the occasion. The celestial objects shown were created from Harvard plates. The series is a rare collectors’ item, according to Ian Ridpath a collector and the editor of the Oxford Dictionary of Astronomy. For more see Ian Ridpath’s Oldest Astro Stamps Index.
Mexican stamps honoring Tonantzintla showed images from Harvard observatory. Image: Ian Ridpath’s Oldest Astro Stamps Index, 1940-1949.
“Foreign Group” at Harvard Observatory - 1939
Shapley first traveled to Mexico in the early 1930s. At the time the country was caught up in the tumultuous Mexican Revolution (1910-1940) of unrest and military rule. His host took him to “the pyramids and monuments of to the Teotihuacan” he wrote in his 1969 memoir. “I … went to the pelota games, and became fascinated with the country.” 5/
By the late 1930s, Shapley had made HCO more international by bringing on staff astronomers fleeing Nazi Europe; the graduate program had more foreign students unlikely to advance in astronomy at home. (From 1933 Shapley pushed to find jobs at Harvard and elsewhere for “academic exiles,” as they were known. As the scourge rolled across Europe; he promoted a national program. Despite US isolationism and anti-Semitism Shapley helped hundreds find safety and work here.) 6/
Shapley was pleased by the observatory’s diversity. His daughter Mildred wrote he was fond of this photo of the foreign group at HCO ca. 1939.
Luis Enrique Erro
In the photo seated at far right is the Mexican Luis Enrique Erro. He was an unusual student. At age 42 in 1939, Erro had become a “good amateur astronomer,” in Shapley’s estimation. Further, “he wanted us to build astronomy in Mexico where they had traditions and a suitable climate and nothing else,” Shapley recalled in his 1969 memoir Through Rugged Ways to the Stars. In Mexico Erro had trained in engineering; then he served in the parliament. Then he became a diplomat and Mexico’s emissary in Boston.
So Erro was representing the Mexican government in 1940 when Comacho became President. He became known as el Presidente Caballero because he sought to advance Mexico as a civil society. Part of this enlightenment was Erro’s initiative to recall ancient glories and step into modern science. 7/
Shapley recalled Erro “wanted us to lend telescopes and built a new one - a Schmidt type reflector. After some negotiating we … agreed in this noble enterprise of the awakened Mexico.”
Another foreigner in the photo (top row at left) is Bulgarian George Dimitroff. He was born in Bulgaria in 1901 and went to college in Constantinople (Istanbul). He came to America in 1921, attended Boston University and got a PhD in astronomy at Harvard in 1937. He was superintendent of the HCO’s Oak Ridge Observatory. Dimitroff “undertook the rush job on the new Schmidt,” Shapley recalled in his memoir.
“We boxed up … a couple of small cameras; and a plan was developed to take down to Mexico a score or more of American and Canadian astronomers - for this new observatory was to be sort of an international scientific enterprise.”
“Then came December 7, 1941! Pearl Harbor! And a bloody war was begun, I thought that would end things astronomical in Mexico.”
Luis Enrique Erro (1897-1955) Image: Forjadores de Educacion - YouTube
“But no! On the night train from Washington came Erro with specific instructions from President Comacho that the astronomy plan should proceed.” Telling the story to his daughter Mildred, he quotes Camacho as having said “We shall pay.”
“They did provide the funds and we organized the astronomers.”
So in March 1942, “off we went - about 30 astronomers to Mexico, Gretchen [Mrs. Shapley] and I included, with books and telescopes. It was a grand occasion.”
Actually US President Franklin Roosevelt waved the project forward. The generals preceding Camacho tried nationalizing foreign oil companies in Mexico. Naturally, US oil firms operating there objected. Then war broke out, and the United States’ need for Mexican oil was urgent. In December 1941, US relations with Mexico could be eased by a scientific project there led by our country’s most famous astronomer and most prestigious university.
Paris Marie Pişmiş (Pishmish)
The Armenian-Turkish woman astronomer Paris Marie Pişmiş (also written Pishmish) was another remarkable scientist who made the Mexico-Harvard partnership succeed. She is in the center of the middle row of the photo of the 1939 foreign group at Harvard College Observatory.
Since Pişmiş is less well-known, the bio here relies on Jeff Kanipe’s excellent profile in Volume 6 of his Annals of Astronomy and a few other sources. 8/
Paris Marie Pismis (Pishmish) in 1945 Image: Soyarmenio
Pişmiş was born in 1911 into a prominent Armenian family in Constantinople, Turkey. During her education in traditional schools she discovered her talents in math. She persuaded her parents to let her attend the University of Istanbul (founded by Ataturk in 1931) She majored in math and graduated first in her class. A German exile astronomer Erwin Finlay Freundlich guided her PhD thesis in astronomy, awarded in 1937. It concerned galactic rotation, a subject of great interest in the field at the time.
Freundlich recommended his star student to Shapley. In 1938 Pişmiş crossed the Atlantic to be part of the third “summer school” at the HCO. Shapley had devised these gatherings of selected astronomers and physicists from the US and abroad for 6 weeks of intense discussion and teaching. So at age 25 Pişmiş was mingling with the likes of Bart Bok (Dutch, in the photo) and Cecilia Payne-Gaposhkin (British, in the photo). She met Jan Oort, Kurt Lundmark and Howard Robertson. Also on hand were telescope-makers George Dimitroff and James Baker, a graduate student. 9/
Pişmiş stayed at HCO for postdoctoral work on a Guggenheim fellowship. A paper she published in 1941 in the observatory Bulletin (No 915) analyzed a double cluster in the region of h and x Perseii. Did it foreshadow her 1959 Catalog of 24 Star Clusters, one of her main contributions.
Also at the Observatory was a Mexican astronomy student Félix Reçillas, whom Luis Erro had encouraged to come there. Reçillas needed help learning German, the language of science. Pişmiş tutored him; she was fluent having studied with Freundlich and other German faculty in Istanbul.
Pişmiş and Reçillas married. As Shapley recalled of his diverse flock, “A marriage eventuated - a union of a Catholic Mexican Indian and an Armenian Turk.”
In 1942 the couple moved to Mexico to staff the new Tonantzilla OANTON. Pişmiş knew seven languages and key figures in the field. She could handle the library of English-language books shipped down to the new observatory. She had five years of experience with the Harvard telescopes. Paris Pişmiş was as qualified as anyone to manage “the awakening of Mexican astronomy.”
(Pismis) Pishmish in her office at UNAM where she taught for 50 years. Image: Ilanyan
“In 1948, Pishmish accepted a position as an astronomer at the Tacubaya Observatory, an institution in need of expertise. It was affiliated with the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City, where Pishmish taught for over 50 years.”
“
Paris Marie Pishmish was “the one person most influential in establishing Mexico’s importance in astronomical education and research."
- Dorrit Hoffleit 10/
The work and legacy of the founders of OANTON and its 26-in Schmidt camera continued, even as leading-edge Mexican work moved elsewhere, due to light pollution at the original site. The hastily-built Schmidt camera was decommissioned in 1995, not before it served under the guidance of another remarkable, modern Mexican astronomer.
Guillermo Haro: A Star is Born
Guillermo Haro (1913-1988) Image: unamglobal.unam.mx
Astronomers worldwide have likely heard of Haro-Herbig objects (Haro-11 is pictured below). But few know that Guillermo Haro, the objects’ co-discoverer and Mexico’s most famous astronomer, was one of the trio who sustained that country’s excellence.
Haro, born in 1913, became interested in astronomy by coincidence. In 1937 Luis Erro, then an amateur astronomer, interviewed Haro for the daily paper Excélsior about something else. Previously Haro “studied philosophy and law,” but his 1937 encounter with Erro and astronomy got him hooked. 10/
Erro who did so much to establish OANTON in Tonantzintla, became its director from 1942. In 1943 he hired Haro as an assistant.
During the war years Erro arranged for Haro to visit American observatories at Harvard, Case, Yerkes and MacDonald. So Haro learned by visiting top observatories in North America; he could not go on the grand tour of European observatories, that had trained young American astronomers.
When Haro returned to Mexico in 1945, he continued working at the OANTON. “He was responsible for the commissioning of the new … Schmidt camera.” He began a study of extremely red and extremely blue stars.
“Haro's contributions to observational astronomy were primarily made using the Tonantzintla 28-in Schmidt telescope. Among them was the detection of a large number of planetary nebulae in the direction of the Galactic Center.“
He developed a three-color image technique at Tontanzintla which was used at Palomar to find objects: Fifty of these turned out to be quasars. He compiled a list of 8,746 blue stars with W.J. Luytens published in 1961.
He discovered what are known as Herbig-Haro objects with American George Herbig. They were a new type of bright nebulosity associated with newborn stars. 11/
“Haro was very influential in the development of astronomy in Mexico, not only by virtue of his own astronomical research but also by promoting the development of new institutions. In a more important aspect he defined modern astrophysical research in Mexico where he gave impulse to different initial lines of research and established general scientific policies.”
Haro became the first person from Mexico to be elected to the Royal Astronomical Society, in 1959.
Mexican Legacy Seen Today
Doble abrazo
Shapley continued investing his and Harvard’s efforts into the buildup of Mexican science. (See Journals.)
“I went down to Mexico again the next year; that time I took the physicists. [dates, with Gretchen, are (apr…1943) “the year after the mathematicians. By that time collaboration had become a habit, and ever since the United states and Mexico have had good connections in mathematics, in physics and in astronomy.
“The American Physical Society met in Mexico in 1950.”
“I was of course decorated with top-notch Mexican honors_quite unnecessary.”
When he told the Mexico story to his daughter Mildred he wrapped it up thus:
“[W]hen Camacho finished his six-year term [in 1946] both Gretchen and I were invited to the inaugural ceremonies involving Camacho and his successor…. Many distinguished foreigners lined up to say goodbye to President Camacho.
“When he came to me, he didn’t shake hands but enthusiastically gave me the doble abrazo - the top salute of friendship. I didn’t know what to do; the best I could manage with President Camacho was to pat him repeatedly on the back.”
Mesoamerican Ants
On his first visit in 1932 Shapley had climbed the Pyramid of the Sun at the pre-Mayan Nahuati site at Teotichuacan. He looked for ants, of course. “Near the top I found a nest of Harvester ants where their food of wild barley was very scarce. Incidentally, on two later trips I checked up on them. Their descendants are still in operation.”
We don’t know of anyone who has checked up lately on these ants.
The Pyramid of the Sun in Teotichuacán was built between AD 1 and 250 by the pre-Mayan Nahuati people. Its base is 750 feet on each side. It is 200 feet high. Its size rivals the Great Pyramid of Khufu at Giza. Image: Mulkowa (2023) WikiCommons.
Interamerican Scientific Journals Launched
The Harvard College Observatory under Shapley became the hub for scientific publication translation and sharing with Mexico and other Latin American nations.
In 1942 the observatory took over the Committee on Inter-American Scientific Publication, which had started at MIT the year before. This committee arranged translations of papers by Latin American scientists from Spanish had Portuguese into English. Important papers and summaries from English-speaking journals were translated, sent, and published in Latin countries. A small State Department grant supported this project. A key role was played by Science Service of which Shapley was a trustee (get years and refs).
In June 1949 Shapley published in Science a detailed summary of how “this initial enterprise” grew. The dense 3 pages of facts and journal names began in his journalistic style:
“A direct reporting service to all the 1,323 Peruvian physicians; the building up of a mathematical library in the City of Mexico; the processing and placing of 92 articles in technical and scientific journals of the United States; the compiling of a Latin American Men of Science -- these are among the activities of a small committee that has been working for eight years in the interests of promoting both the international spirit of science and inter-American cooperation.” 12/
CREDITS
This post for #HispanicHeritageMonth grew out of my work on an article on Shapley's campaign to find academic jobs here for scientists and scholars fleeing Nazi Europe. The Mexico story had intrigued me ever since, at the Harvard University Archives, I found the photo of my grandparents arriving in Mexico in 1942. (It’s the Inter-American Astrophysical image above).
The Archives staff deserves thanks for helping me navigate the 167 boxes of Harlow Shapley Papers - then and since.
For advice on astronomy text and images, I thank Jeff Kanipe, author of Annals of the Dark Sky. Thanks go to Bill Keel at the University of Alabama for his info and photos. I grateful to Sophia Ojha for her programming skills and patience. - DS
NOTES
1/ https://www.inaoep.mx/ In 1971 EL INAOE was created from El Observatorio Astrofísico Nacional de Tonantzintla (OANTON).General information on EL INAOE in Spanish and English is https://astro.inaoep.mx/en/department/general-information. Also see Facebook https://www.facebook.com/OANTNT/?locale=es_LA .
2/ Shapley and Camacho quotes from “Mexico Dedicates New Observatory: Shapley of Harvard Stresses It Leads the World in Some Fields of Research,” New York Times, Feb 18, 1942. Inauguration from “Dawn of Astrophysics in Mexico” by Paris Pismis on OANTON page https://astro.inaoep.mx/observatorios/oanton/.
3/ Inter-American Astrophysical Conference in Mexico, 1942. “The New National Astrophysical Observatory of Mexico,” Science, Vol 95, No 2459, pp 164-165. President Camacho’s invitation is quoted. See also Journals.
4/ For Camacho biography https://www.wikiwand.com/en/articles/Manuel_%C3%81vila_Camacho.
5/ Rest of Shapley quotes are from pp. 139-140 of his memoir Through Rugged Ways to the Stars (1969) and from pp. 157-159 in Mildred Shapley Matthews, Shapley’s Round Table (2021).
6/ Foreign group photo. The AIP TK AIP/ESVA # now has bios of those pictured. Shapley’s campaign to help scientists from Europe is shown by Deborah Shapley in “Shapley’s Legacies after Mount Wilson” https://harlowshapley.org/blog/shapley-legacies-after-mount-wilson/ .
7/ Erro biography https://www.wikiwand.com/en/articles/Luis_Enrique_Erro .
Also Forjadores de la Educacion - YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOJ0Lr0mjvE
8/ Pişmiş (Pishmish) Kanipe, Jeff Annals of the Deep Sky Vol. 6 pp.54-57. For PDF use the contact form at https://harlowshapley.org/about.
https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Pishmish/
On Tumblr
Ianyan Magazine:
“An Armenian Supernova in Mexico” by Jennifer Manoukian March 24, 2013
9/ DeVorkin, David H., “The Harvard Summer School in Astronomy,” Physics Today, July 1984 pp. 46, 49, 50-55.
10/ Hoffleit, Dorrit (2005), "Two Turkish lady astronomers". Journal of the American Association of Variable Star Observers. 33 (2): 127–129. Bibcode:2005JAVSO..33..127H.
12/ In 1949 Shapley wrote in Science a thorough description of the journals, numbers of papers translated and published. SeeHS-Journals-1949-science.109.2842.603.